


Fermata

by Lokei



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e06 Window of Opportunity, Literary Reference, M/M, Voyeurism, pottery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the J/D Promptathon 2011<br/>Prompt: “Jack at the pottery wheel, a slick coating of clay on his skin, Daniel watching”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fermata

**Author's Note:**

> Set during “Window of Opportunity,” Season 4.
> 
> The section headings and title are all musical terms: fermata (pause), sforzato (a strong accented note which drops to soft immediately), cadenza (a solo piece with lots of fancy elements), accelerando (increasing in tempo), da capo al fine (start over from the beginning and repeat to the end).  
> For the full text of T.S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” see [here](%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/norton.html%E2%80%9D).

**  
_Sforzato_   
**

Daniel hurried through the halls, keeping his eyes open for any sign of Jack. The colonel had disappeared partway through their most recent session of translation, claiming he was in need of a ‘brain break,’ and had now been gone for the better part of two hours. Daniel hadn’t chased him, knowing that the strain lines around Jack’s eyes were well earned. According to Teal’c, the two of them had lost track of how many loops they’d been through so far, and they were only two-thirds through the temple translations which would hopefully tell them how to undo the temporal re-runs.

The entire idea was enough to boggle the mind, if you weren’t a member of SG-1. Daniel had seen plenty already to rival the idea of being stuck in a time loop—he just wished he were the one travelling it in a straight line with Jack so that he could be more helpful. It had to be annoying as hell to re-convince everyone every time. Daniel had a suspicion that he probably enthused about the translations just about as much every reset—that was probably annoying, too.

Still, the best thing he could do for Jack was to get through the translations as quickly as possible, which was why he’d continued to work after Jack had fled, and now Daniel was trying to track him down to drill him on the new sections so that Jack could carry them forward.

Following the directions of the last airman who had seen Jack, Daniel picked up speed as he heard an unusual whirring sound coming from one of the storerooms just off the corridor where most of Daniel’s own department had their offices. The sound was vaguely familiar, but it was the smell that kicked Daniel’s memory into gear. Wet clay always reminded him of something: sometimes it was a day on Abydos, sometimes a trip along the Nile with his parents as a kid, sometimes a dig he’d been on in any of a dozen places on Earth. Mostly comforting memories, which was nice. But not at all an aroma he was expecting here of all places.

Caution born of too many close calls slowed his steps as he got close: he shouldn’t have to worry about someone playing with pottery in an anthro storeroom, but even if it wasn’t exactly a foothold situation, at the very least it would be rude to startle whoever was in there. If they were actually throwing pots, which was Daniel’s best guess at the whirring sound, they wouldn’t appreciate being made to spoil a pull.

Daniel peeked around the doorway and froze, hand desperately clenching against the wall as the sight before him registered.

Jack was at a potter’s wheel. It had to be Jack, though Daniel couldn’t remember ever having seen him in that indecently open-necked blue tee-shirt before. It left neither collarbones nor biceps any kind of concealing cover, and the rusty liquid slip that gleamed on Jack’s forearms and fingers and spattered dustily across his thighs made Jack look more the picture of an Old World artisan than an Air Force colonel.

Daniel slowly uncurled his fingers to press his hand flat against the wall, leaning soundlessly against the doorframe as Jack worked on in quiet concentration.

 **  
_Cadenza_   
**

The wheel spun steadily, at just the right speed to react easily to a gentle touch. Daniel could see that Jack had the feel of it in his fingers, and he envied. Pottery was one of those arts Daniel had tried in college, and again on Abydos, but his wheel was always either too slow and required too much force to shift the clay such that it always came out lopsided, or so fast that a casual brush would send the whole tower into instant collapse. But Jack had the balance that Daniel had always sought.

In more ways than one, it would seem.

Jack leaned his elbows on his spread thighs to get the proper leverage to pull more of the weight of the clay from its base up the whirling tower. His back straightened slowly as the cylinder rose under his fingertips, and he lifted his hands away gently to dip them in the bucket of water by his side as he scrutinized the form before him, a small smile on his face. Daniel could feel an echoing smile pull at the corners of his mouth as he watched, barely daring to breathe lest he disturb the scene in front of him.

Jack leaned in once more, one hand narrowed to re-enter the cylinder, wrist curving gently as he pushed out from within and the clay began to bulge. Jack steadied it from the outside, his other hand curving opposite to bring the clay up and over in the beginnings of an amphora shape. In a delicate dance of pushing out and pulling up, he coaxed the vase’s neck closer and thinner and then paused, all but two of his fingers removed from the opening, to squeeze a few drops from the sponge onto the clay’s rim, then pushed lightly down to make it flare.

Jack shifted back once more and his foot eased off the pedal, releasing a long breath as the wheel slowed to a gradual stop. Daniel realized he’d been holding his breath as well and tried to let it out soundlessly as he watched the smile grow on Jack’s face. The potter was apparently pleased with his handiwork—and quite frankly, so was Daniel. His brain could admire the aesthetics of the piece; his hormones were falling over themselves in adoration for the competence with which those hands had worked it. Daniel shifted infinitesimally to bring the folder he was carrying in front of his hips, but apparently the colonel had replaced the artisan, for even that small movement in his peripheral vision brought Jack’s concentrated gaze right to where the archaeologist lurked in the doorway.

 **  
_Accelerando_   
**

“Daniel?” Jack sat further back on his stool and grabbed a towel to scrub his hands and arms clean. Daniel’s hormones mourned and his brain raced.

“What’s up, Daniel?” Jack repeated, a certain amount of aggravation in his voice. “You need me for something?”

Daniel licked his lips. _Hell yes_ was probably not the right answer. “Uh, right, sorry to disturb you. I just, I got further on the translation and wanted to get it to you in time for you to remember the gist of it for next time.”

Jack looked at the clock on the wall. “If all I have to remember is ‘the gist of it,’ I don’t need one and a half hours, Daniel. Unless by ‘gist’ you mean ‘word for word.’” He smiled a little, and Daniel rolled his eyes in return. Right, so Jack was a little annoyed at getting caught doing something other than shooting or fishing or whatever else he thought suited his flyboy public persona, but at least Daniel was forgiven.

Jack waved him into the room and Daniel sidled in carefully, nodding at the vase in front of them both to deflect Jack’s gaze. “That’s really impressive, Jack. How long have you been at that?”

“How long were you standing in the doorway?”

Daniel frowned. “I meant how long have you been practicing pottery? You’re quite good.”

Jack shrugged. “Picked it up somewhere along the way. Think it was probably a suggestion from one of those post-mission eval things. ‘A good way to relieve stress,’ they said.”

Daniel grinned. “Pounding clay always made me feel better when I’d spent too long arguing with my fellow students in college. I never got very good at throwing, though. Apparently I was better suited to recreating stone tools in the rock lab over in the archaeology building. Different kind of pressure points.”

Jack stretched and Daniel tried really hard not to look too obviously. “Did I just hear you admit to being more Neanderthal than me, Daniel?” Jack grinned.

“Funny, Jack. Enjoy it, I’m never going to give you an opening like that again.”

“Don’t be too sure, we could have this conversation in the future and you wouldn’t remember not to walk right into it.”

That gave Daniel an idea. There was no way Jack would ever bring up his skills at the potter’s wheel in casual conversation, but Daniel desperately didn’t want to forget it. If nothing else, he’d have fantasy fodder for months, if not years. “So tell me, and see.”

“What?”

“When the loops end, and you know we’ve gotten out of it for sure, tell me that you do this, and see what I say.”

Jack smirked. “Is that a challenge?”

“It’s a request.” That might have come out a little too earnest, Daniel reflected, as Jack’s gaze sharpened and he regarded Daniel for a long moment before reaching some conclusion and nodding silently.

Jack gestured to the files. “So, is it ‘word for word’ after all?”

“Huh?” Daniel winced. Apparently his brain was still south of his belt. “Oh. Um, no ‘gist’ will really do. There aren’t enough nuances in this section to require more than a summary.”

“Nuances,” Jack rolled the word around and looked keenly at Daniel one more time before shrugging. “Fair enough. So, that mean’s I’ve got time to kill and more clay, so I might as well. You wanna stick around and keep me company?”

Daniel had the suspicion that Jack had a suspicion about the nature of Daniel’s interest in his pottery hobby, but in the end he couldn’t pass up the temptation. He settled himself on one of the tables on a diagonal from Jack’s direct view, and Jack expertly wound a wire around his fingers and slid it under the pot to separate it from the wheel. He used a piece of cardboard to transfer it to the table—third in a line of increasing size and height. Daniel looked at them and then at Jack, a question in his eyes.

Jack shrugged again, but his expression was deliberately still. “They’ll disappear in an hour or so, but I figure I might as well get to enjoy the signs of progress while they last. So at least I remember that they existed, and could exist again.”

Daniel absorbed that while Jack affixed another lump of kneaded clay to the wheel and squeezed the sponge over it a few times before starting up the wheel again. There was no added drama to his movements, no flourishes which suggested that Jack was playing to an audience, but there was still a different quality to the air between them. Jack was aware he was being observed this time, but whatever self-consciousness he had when first disturbed had smoothed into a quiet kind of pleasure beyond that of the making. Jack didn’t seem to mind Daniel watching—or maybe it was that he didn’t mind because it was Daniel watching?

It reminded Daniel of something he’d read and loved in a long ago seminar, that plus what Jack had said about things existing which could exist again. _“And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses/Had the look of flowers that are looked at.”_ Flowers were surely happier when looked at—Daniel had always thought that the roses in T.S. Eliot’s poem there could stand in for a loved one, someone who glowed more when looked at by the person who loved them. Maybe it was ridiculous, but that whole first section of “Burnt Norton” was all about possibilities. Possibilities taken, possibilities set aside, gardens of dead rose petals from gardens that no one saw except in memories of things that didn’t happen.

 _Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened  
Into the rose-garden. My words echo  
Thus, in your mind._

Daniel was seeing possibilities growing here like the rising petal shape of clay under Jack’s touch, and he needed a way to tell his future self that they existed, in this memory only Jack would have and would only half-understand.

“Jack?” He said quietly. “Would you tell me something else, when we get out of the loops?”

Jack lifted his hands a fraction and glanced up, eyebrows raised.

“It’s just a message for me, for when I can do something about it,” Daniel elaborated. “Would you mind?”

Jack sat up straighter. “Shoot. I’m getting good at this remembering jazz.”

“This one’s ‘word for word,’” Daniel cautioned, and Jack gave him his ‘get on with it’ look. Daniel took a breath, picked his words, and hoped the echoes would carry.

 **  
_Da Capo al Fine_   
**

Daniel watched Jack eat his oatmeal with truly remarkable relish. He couldn’t keep from commenting on it—but the thought of a hundred or more breakfasts of Froot Loops reminded him of something he’d wondered as he lay awake watching the clock successfully turn over the midnight hour.

“Let me ask you something,” he began, eyebrows raised expectantly. “In all the time that you were…err…looping, were you ever tempted to do something crazy?”

Jack looked up and Sam’s expression brightened like she wished she had big enough ears for them to visibly perk.

“I mean…you could do anything without worrying about the consequences.”

Jack’s face went still. “You know, it's funny. You asked me that before.”

Daniel knew Jack was playing him and let him anyway. After all, it was Jack. “And?”

Jack glanced at Carter with a complicated smirk that Daniel couldn’t parse and wasn’t sure he wanted to try. Sam looked at Daniel for answers, and, finding none, soon excused herself as Jack continued to make his oatmeal pleasures obnoxiously obvious.

Daniel felt his brows draw together. “Jack,” he said patiently. “What didn’t you want to say just now?”

Jack put down his spoon and finally looked Daniel full in the face. It surprised Daniel how much he had missed Jack’s gaze—since they’d gotten home from P4X-639, Jack had spent as little time as possible with any of them, and barely looked at Daniel at all. Daniel tried not to take it personally; after uncounted loops stuck translating Ancient with him, Jack was understandably probably sick of even the sound of his voice.

“In one of the last, I dunno, quarter of loops, you told me to tell you two things when we finally broke the cycle.”

“Okay.”

Jack said nothing.

“And they were?” Daniel prompted.

“One was that I spent a bunch of loops up to my elbows in clay. Haven’t done that in years, but I got back to being pretty decent at throwing pots during this whole mess. Made for good stress relief.”

Daniel’s eyebrows went up. “That’s—wow. I tried pottery for a semester in college, never really got the hang of it. I was better at chipping stone flake tools, but I always wished—“

“I know,” Jack interrupted, but more gently than yesterday.

“Right.” Daniel fiddled with the remains of his breakfast and tried not to think about Jack’s hands covered in slip. “And the other thing?”

Jack shrugged. “Didn’t make much sense to me, but you made me memorize it. Looked it up later, it’s some kind of poetry piece? But you left out a big chunk in the middle.”

Daniel suppressed the desire to roll his eyes. “I’m sure I excerpted for a reason. What lines did I ask you to tell me?”

“’Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future,’ and ‘the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at.’” Jack had his ‘let’s humor the crazy archaeologist’ face on.

“Hmm. ‘Burnt Norton’ by T.S. Eliot. Part of _The Four Quartets_. Always liked that one,” Daniel said calmly, though his fingers tightened on the edge of the tray to keep from waving triumphantly in the air. God, he was brilliant—and Jack maybe loved him.

“So, if you’re not sick of absolutely all of us, myself included, you want to come over for a game of chess tonight?”

Jack leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. “You gonna tell me what your message means when I get there?”

Daniel stood and grinned down at his friend, not needing to answer. _Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose-garden._

Time to open the door.


End file.
